In 2008, the province of British Columbia, Canada introduced financial incentives to encourage general practitioners (GPs) to assume the role of major source of care for patients seeking mental health treatment in primary care. If successful, this intervention could strengthen GP–patient attachment and consequently improve continuity of care. The impact of this intervention, however, has never been investigated.

To estimate the population level impact of physician incentives on continuity of care (COC).

This retrospective study examined linked health administrative data from physician claims, hospital separations, vital statistics, and insurance plan registries. Monthly cohorts of individuals with depression were identified and their GP visits tracked for 12 months, following receipt of initial diagnosis. COC indices were created, one for any visits (AV) and another for mental health visits (MHV) only. COC (range: 0–100) was calculated using published formula that accounts for the number of visits and number of GPs visited. Interrupted time series analysis was used to estimate the changes in COC before (01/2005–12/2007) and after (01/2008–12/2012) the introduction of physician incentives.

The monthly number of people diagnosed with depression ranged from 7497 to 10,575; yearly rates remained stable throughout the study period. At the start of the study period, mean COC for AV and MHV were 75.6 and 82.2 respectively, with slopes of –0.11 and –0.06. Post-intervention, the downward trend was disrupted but did not reverse.

Physician incentives failed to enhance COC. However, results suggest that COC could have been worse without the incentives.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.